In the United States, tropical rain forests are found only in Hawaii. (Recall that Hawaii is in the tropical climate zone.) As you might expect, rain forests get a great deal of rain-at least 200 centimeters a year. Kauai, Hawaii, may be the wettest place on Earth. It receives an average rainfall of 1215 centimeters every year! Temperatures in the tropical rain forests remain warm all year, so plants grow well here throughout the year. Rain forests have more varieties of plant life than any other biome. Trees grow to a height of 35 meters or more. High above the forest floor, the tops of the trees meet to form a green roof, or layer, called a canopy (KAN-uh-pee). The canopy is so dense that rainfall may not reach the forest floor for 10 minutes after hitting the canopy! Most of the other plants in a rain forest grow in the canopy, where sunlight can reach them. Woody vines up to 90 meters long hang from the trees. Orchids and ferns grow on the branches of trees instead of on the ground. Like the plant life, animal life in a rain forest is rich and varied. Some rain forest animals spend their entire lives high in the trees and never touch the ground. Parrots, toucans, and hundreds of other birds live in the canopy. At night, huge colonies of bats come out to hunt among the trees. Insects, tree frogs, and snakes crawl on the trunks and branches of the trees. Coastal temperate rain forests are found in wet, cool climates where the collision of marine air and coastal mountains causes large amounts of rainfall. The worldwide distribution of coastal temperate rain forests has always been limited and today much of their remaining thirty to forty million hectares is located in Chile and along the Pacific Northwest of North America.

Exotic orchids (top) are among the many different plants you can expect to see growing in the topical rain forest on Maui, Hawaii.

Temperate rain forest in Washington state

The forest floor is covered by ferns, mosses, and small plants. Mosses and lichens grow on the tree trunks and rocks. Although this rain forest has layers of tall, medium, and low growing vegetation, the cool winters limit the numbers and kinds of life forms that live here. Compared to the tropical rain forest, the temperate rain forest has a less complex ecology. For example, the topmost layer of the temperate rain forest on the western edge of North America is dominated by four kinds of tall coniferous trees. These are: the Douglas-Fir, the Sitka Spruce, the Western Red Cedar, and the Western Hemlock When these trees are full grown, they are between 130 to 280 feet tall. In some areas other conifers dominate. For example, in California redwood trees grow in the temperate rain forest.

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